L.A.’s Long Platonic Affair With Neighborhood Councils

Valley secessionists chafe at what they consider the poor quality of services and lack of representation the San Fernando Valley receives from City Hall. Some contend that a thorough overhaul of the City Charter is the only way to forestall the division of Los Angeles into its constituent cities. Still others think that neighborhood councils are the answer, because they might give the Valley a greater voice in its own affairs.

Neighborhood councils may seem like a new idea, but they are not. Indeed, neighborhood-based government, in the form of boroughs, has been a reform staple in Los Angeles since the turn of the century. Yet, it still remains, for better or worse, just a theory.

The idea of neighborhood councils dates back to 1909, when Angelenos were trying to acquire Wilmington and San Pedro to build a harbor for their city. Both cities feared losing their autonomy, so Los Angeles offered to create a borough system, as well as pay for harbor construction. L.A.’s voters approved a charter amendment upholding their end of the deal. Six months later, the voters of San Pedro, Wilmington and Los Angeles voted to incorporate the two harbor towns into the larger city.

Borough governments were not designed to be paper tigers. They could “regulate and control all local municipal affairs,” except those explicitly given the city. They could levy taxes, issue bonds and exercise the powers that state law conferred on small cities. A borough could appoint an attorney, clerk, treasurer, auditor, recorder, even “a marshal and necessary police officers.”

There was a catch: California’s Constitution did not provide for boroughs in 1909. In 1911, however, a state constitutional amendment ostensibly resolved the problem.

Still, the idea of borough government gathered dust. Because the city had come through on its promise of harbor-improvement bonds, San Pedro and Wilmington residents didn’t press the autonomy point. But in 1917, a group from Wilmington completed all the steps necessary to form a borough. Yet, the City Council refused to call an election, pending the outcome of certain legal issues. The California Supreme Court subsequently ruled in the council’s favor, citing legal technicalities.

But the city’s population growth kept the issue of boroughs alive while sparking general interest in a more comprehensive charter rewrite. By 1923, a charter written for a city of 50,000 was clearly ill-suited for a city about to reach 1 million. Voters elected a Board of Freeholders to draft a new document.

Again, the idea of borough government enjoyed great popularity. Groups from the Valley, the Harbor area and the Westside all pushed for it. The Associated Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley wrote letters promoting it. These groups were joined by chambers of commerce and improvement associations from San Pedro and other parts of the city. As a result, the Freeholders wrote boroughs into their new charter and allowed a separate vote on the issue of whether to elect council members by district, another change pushed by advocates of greater local control. The voters approved both changes by large margins.

The 1925 charter, as one would expect, redefined what constituted a borough, laid out the procedures for forming one, and set up an approval process. As in 1909, borough government would not be a paper tiger. Indeed, the borough’s board would be stronger than the city’s powerful proprietary departments--water and power, and harbor. But, again, there was a catch. The charter’s details failed to address the legal issue identified in the earlier ruling by the state Supreme Court: whether one area of a city could become a borough if others did not. There was also the problem of council power. The City Council could indirectly block the formation of any borough because it was the final arbiter of its proposed boundaries. Alternatively, the council could stop any community from becoming a borough by simply refusing to allow a vote.

Consequently, boroughs continued to remain a theory of local government. When city growth again made local services an issue in 1950, Assemblyman Vincent Thomas, pushed by Harbor area constituents who wanted the neighborhood autonomy they were promised in 1909, introduced a constitutional amendment to allow boroughs, as defined by the 1925 charter. It passed, but no advisory borough board was ever created.

When charter reform became a local cause in the late 1960s, the Reining Commission, appointed to write a new document, came up with the idea of neighborhood boards. Advisory in function, these boards would appoint a salaried “neighborman” to act as an advocate for and ombudsman of the interests of the neighborhood. Neighborhood boards, however, would not have the tax and assessment powers previously proposed for the borough boards.

Voters never got the chance to express an opinion on the neighborhood boards. The council removed them from the proposed 1970 charter before it ever went to them. To add insult to injury, the 1925 charter’s provisions for advisory borough boards were removed by an amendment in 1973. The chief legislative analyst misinformed voters by falsely asserting that the charter provisions creating these boards were obsolete, due to the state Constitution. Actually, the constitution then, as now, allowed city charters to provide for “subgovernment in all or part of a city.”

In any case, the idea of neighborhood councils continued to be a theory untested, which may explain why today’s secessionists and dissidents are so quick to preach its virtues. If the two charter-reform commissions currently considering how to reinvent city government end up, as did their predecessors, embracing neighborhood councils to make City Hall more responsive, L.A. history offers at least one lesson. It’s not enough to just write them into a new charter and then move on to other business.

There is also a bigger lesson to be learned. There are limits to what charter reform can do, no matter how high-sounding its goals. Los Angeles does not operate in a vacuum. Its charter is constrained by the state Constitution. Reformers urge that a new charter work to improve education, bring party labels back into local elections or squarely confront the city’s limited finances. All these ideas are good, but state law, a higher law, has something to say on each of these issues.

In William Faulkner’s “Sanctuary,” a lawyer laments, “There ought to be a law.” Faulkner’s point is that though there must be laws, they can’t fix everything. So it is with city charters. Seen in this light, perhaps there is wisdom in the historical fact that neighborhood-based government has remained just a theory in the city of the angels.